Evgeniy Stepanets was born in Luhansk (East Ukraine) in 1989.
Finished Volodymyr Dahl East Ukrainian National University. He currently lives and works in Kyiv as freelance photographer and designer. He is focusing on documentary photography, exploring social issues in modern Ukraine.
About ‘Not the promised land’:
Luhansk 2014. At the first glance on this series a rare viewer will be able to tell which year is that. Luhansk 2004 used to look the same. By getting it’s ill fame, it now could be found on the map even by those who never heard about that city before.
Back in the days before the war conflict that broke out on the east of Ukraine you were always supposed to explain: at the west there’re Kharkiv and Donetsk, on the east there’s Russia. During the industrial age, at the times of Soviet Union, this city was growing and budding. A lot of plants and universities were opening every decade.
Though during information age, after the collapse of an old empire, city faced the decadence. Now there were no one but some broken proles and young dreamers, who knew for sure that anywhere is better than here. Now the main and often the only goal of so many generation Y and Z representatives was to leave.
When first guns started banging on the streets of Luhansk downtown, thousands of local residents went to the railway station. Now they finally got their long-awaited excuse to leave and try to start all over again.
